Re: Demise of two forestry contractor businesses sparks fears for industry, May 30 story.
I really feel for the contractors being left in the lurch by forest owners. But calls for the Govt to step in and subsidise wages is a bridge way too far.
The forestry sector can not have their cake and eat it too. They crow about the number of people they employ and how valuable they are to the nation and the region. In the good times they are happy to flog their contractors to maximise their profits. When the good times stop they lock the gates and leave them hung out to dry.
There is no other primary sector industry that treats their workers this way. It should be up to the forest owners to support and subsidise their workers, not anyone else. As a farmer, in the good and bad times my staff stay employed and paid.
What this current predicament shows is that in our region, forestry is not profitable — so why do they insist on claiming we need more in our region? If we can’t harvest what we have already, we need to be identifying how to add more value to what we have, on a large scale — to ensure the workers and contractors can have confidence in the industry and we don’t have a repeat of what we are experiencing.
